


when day shows itself

by hellotailor



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: 18th Century, Artists, F/F, Milan, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellotailor/pseuds/hellotailor
Summary: Eight years after they parted ways, Héloïse and Marianne find each other in Milan.Caught in a sunbeam, Héloïse was a stern black column in the doorway, dressed head-to-toe for mourning. Her hair, nun-like, was hidden behind a neat little waterfall of lace.
Relationships: Marianne/Héloïse
Comments: 31
Kudos: 617
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	when day shows itself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigrrmilk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/gifts).



> Title taken from Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," which was in vogue around the time this story takes place.
> 
> Soundtrack: [Maria Teresa Agnesi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6OOnZgdzbk) and [Santiago De Murcia](https://open.spotify.com/track/62BvufxuwAGYph2FW2i5sy?si=2NrvQZxfQ9ukL_AafzHPoA).

The scent of linseed oil came up through the desk, warmed from where Marianne’s cheek pressed against the wood. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, blinking at the spiderweb of little cracks in the wall until her brain turned them ninety degrees clockwise and informed her: _You fell asleep at your desk again_.

Cursing, she pushed back her chair and went to the window. The clocktower at the end of the street said it was a little before three, and she cursed again, gathering up the sketches on her studio floor and rolling them into a haphazard bundle. It would have to do. She would already be late, even if she ran.

She made it to the Contessa’s house in respectable time, pausing outside the gates to smooth her hair and get her breath back. Fortunately the housemaid wasn't the judgemental type, shooting her an amused look as she led Marianne through to the salon.

“Signora,” she said, as soon as the maid was gone. “My apologies. I lost track of time.”

“That’s quite all right,” said the Contessa, sitting resplendent in an acreage of red satin. “I’ve been busy conferring with my young assistant.”

She shifted her legs, and a small blonde girl of around six or seven emerged from behind her chair.

“You should paint some fish,” announced the child. “My nurse always says to count shoals of fish when you want to go to sleep. It’d be easier if you can see them from in bed.”

“What a thoughtful idea,” said Marianne, who was never sure how to to deal with children before they were old enough to take instruction. “Signora, would you like to see the drafts now? We could look at them here, or I could pin them up in the bedroom if you prefer.”

“Here is acceptable,” said the Contessa, and so Marianne set about unrolling her papers and laying them down on the floor, pinning the corners into the carpet. The afternoon light was good in here, but it was a rather unwieldy task. The rolls of paper were thin and almost twelve feet long in places, and they all had to be visible from where the Contessa sat, rheumatism preventing her from getting up to help.

The little girl looked on with interest, and Marianne was caught by the nagging feeling that she recognized her from somewhere. A distant relative from one of the portraits in the hall? An illegitemate grandchild, perhaps. None of the Contessa's children were married yet.

Marianne explained her plan out loud as she laid down the sketches. 

“Here we have the vines, for the wall on the left as you enter the room,” she said. “And then the roses for above the bed.” She pushed away a side-table to make room for the final sheet, laying it down as best she could. “Your idea for a hunting scene will look best on the right, where it can be illuminated by the window during the day.”

It was a pleasingly unusual commission. The Contessa’s husband was on his way home after a long stay in Holland, and she wanted Marianne decorate his room with murals as a gift. It wasn’t Marianne’s job to guess whether he actually wanted it or not, but she couldn’t help but wonder.

“You could put the fish here,” said the child, and pointed to a space under the sketchy outline of the window, kneeling on it so her skirts wrinkled the paper.

 _Please don’t make me add fish,_ thought Marianne. _Three redrafts is already enough._

“Theresa, don’t get chalk on your dress,” scolded the Contessa, and exchanged a look with Marianne. “Why don’t you go and play in your room?” 

“But I want to help!”

“You’ve been a _great_ help already,” said the Contessa, and the child, pouting, trudged out of the room. “I think my husband will have had quite enough of fish and water by now,” she added, once the girl was gone. “But her heart’s in the right place.”

“A sweet child,” said Marianne, noncommittally. 

“You may have to get used to fielding her little suggestions, she’s staying here for the rest of the month. Her father just died, you see,” she confided, in a gossipy tone that was already familiar to Marianne. “My cousin Paulo Marcello, perhaps you’ve heard. It was very sudden.”

Marianne stabbed herself in the finger with a pin. “I’m so sorry,” she heard herself say. There were surely a dozen men of that name in Milan, she told herself. But then, because she couldn’t stop herself, she asked: “The merchant?”

“Ah, so you do know of him. We were hardly close, but his wife’s in no fit state to take care of Theresa now. So here she is.”

No wonder Marianne had recognized the child; Theresa had her mother’s eyes. Marianne had once spent long minutes staring at her little face in a crowded gallery, ignoring the old men jostling at her elbows. Either Theresa's hair had darkened since then, or the artist had made her look fairer for effect, but the resemblance was still obvious. It was the same girl, animated from the flat passivity people seemed to prefer in portraits of their children.

 _No fit state,_ thought Marianne, and smeared the little pinprick of blood into the palm of her hand, forcing her attention back to her work.

Hours later, walking blindly through the twilit streets to her home, she could barely recall another word from her meeting with the Contessa. Mechanically, she climbed the winding staircase to her studio and picked up the covered bowl of spätzle that the cleaning girl had left on her doorstep for dinner. She ate it standing up, looking at nothing. Every other thought had been washed away by a wave of Héloïse.

* * *

When she first returned to Milan, Marianne had told herself very firmly not to look for her. For a long time, it worked. She hadn’t even known Héloïse’s new family name until she stumbled across that painting, dropped casually in her path like a bear trap. _The Lady Héloïse Marcello and Daughter._ Héloïse, staring straight ahead in an airy white gown, the book placed pointedly in her lap. The little girl standing at her side, a little nervous. An uninspiring choice of light and composition, although that hadn't been Marianne's focus at the time. 

After that she’d occasionally hear the family name in passing, usually from clients. People loved to gossip while they were having their portraits painted. But either they’d turn out to be talking about someone else, or the news would be something boring, like Signor Paolo losing some money on a bad shipping deal, or arriving scandalously late to the opera. They never answered any of the questions Marianne wanted to ask, like: _Is Héloïse happy? Is she well? Does she still think of me?_ She could probably have found out, but it didn’t feel fair to either of them. There was no need to poke at a wound that was on its way to healing.

 _No fit state_ , the Contessa had said. Well, that could mean anything. Héloïse might be mad with grief, or she might be failing to grieve _enough_. The latter seemed more likely. 

Marianne didn’t want to be the sort of person who believed in fate. But fate had dropped Héloïse in her lap all those years ago, and now, so it seemed, it was happening again. What to do next, she had no idea.

Marching up to Héloïse’s door would be too much, suggesting that Marianne had been sniffing around this whole time like Penelope’s suitors, waiting for her husband to die. No. But writing a letter felt too distant, and too much like another kind of ambush. In the end, Marianne decided to wait and see how much she could learn from the only source she had on offer: Theresa.

* * *

The next step for the Contessa’s mural was to transfer the sketches to the walls. The servants had already moved all the furniture out of the absent Conte's bedroom, and the kitchen boy had smoothed down the plasterwork, so Marianne would spend today laying down the base layer. It was a simple, repetitive task that left her with an empty head and aching forearms, and she’d almost forgotten about her plan until she went downstairs to refill her water jug, and found Theresa reading a book on the landing, frowning in concentration.

Marianne paused for a moment, and then knelt down on the step below. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Marianne, do you remember me?”

Theresa shot her a vaguely scornful look. “You were here last week, I’m not stupid.”

“Well, an important young lady like you, I thought maybe you had a lot of visitors. You might not keep track.”

The girl squinted up at her. “I don’t get _any_ visitors. They’re only ever here for the Auntie.”

“Not even your family?”

“Nurse came with me,” said Theresa, sounding confused. “She sleeps in my room.”

“Surely your mama - your mother misses you?”

“She’s in mourning,” said Theresa in an important tone, like she was repeating someone else's words. “She needs the house all to herself, so I’m helping by being here.”

“All to herself?”

“She likes to be alone. She’s probably busy putting all of daddy’s hunting trophies in boxes so she can sink them into the sea,” Theresa added, with bloodthirsty satisfaction.

Well, that answered the question of whether Héloïse had grown to love her husband, at least.

* * *

Once the base layer was dry, the annoying part of the process began. After poking holes along every line of the draft sketches, Marianne perched on a stool and hung all the papers from the cornices, painstakingly making sure they laid flat against the walls. 

Nose six inches away from the surface, she set about rubbing charcoal through all the little holes, checking and re-checking to make sure the lines were tracing through correctly. It was the sort of job that others might leave to an apprentice, but Marianne had no one besides the girl who came to clean her studio once a week. And besides, she wasn’t good at trusting other people to get things right.

She was busy outlining a cypress tree when a voice came from behind her: “When Theresa told me there was a woman painting upstairs, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be you.”

The papers flapped and rustled in the air as Marianne whirled around. Caught in a dusty sunbeam, Héloïse was a stern black column in the doorway, dressed head-to-toe for mourning. Her hair, nun-like, was hidden behind a neat little waterfall of lace.

Marianne's breath caught in her throat. "Are you disappointed, or relieved?"

"We'll see," said Héloïse, and stepped into the room, inspecting the sketches of trees and triumphant huntsman with a frown. She didn’t so much as glance at Marianne; but of course Marianne had no way of knowing how long she'd been watching secretly from the doorway. It was like a little dance that protected them from having to look each other in the eye, Héloïse gliding past her, just out of reach. 

“My condolences," Marianne said at last, to the back of Héloïse’s head. It was only then she noticed they'd both been speaking French. 

Héloïse let out an ugly laugh. “For what?”

Marianne tried not to feel tripped up. “Would you prefer me to come straight out and offer my congratulations?”

Héloïse turned, finally, to look Marianne full in the face. Her eyes were as bright and as fast as ever, although a line had engraved itself between her brows. When people said that the years had not been kind to someone, they usually spoke in terms of aches and scars and bad teeth. Héloïse looked every inch the wealthy Milanese lady, but Marianne could still see how the unkindness of life had molded her. It was in that little line between her brows, and the way her fingers curled angrily into the fabric of her skirt. 

“I’ll accept your sympathies on my mother’s behalf, then,” said Héloïse. “She died last year.”

“Your daughter made it sound like you were confined to the house.”

“Oh, I go out all the time,” she said, with another humorless laugh. “To church, and to visit my mother-in-law. If anyone’s confining me indoors, it’s myself. Home is the only place I can go without people _watching_ me.”

People like the Contessa and her servants. And all of Héloïse’s neighbors, probably, if she lived in a fashionable part of town. Marianne hadn’t considered it before, but Héloïse must live at the center of a vortex of gossip, and was uniquely unsuited to being there.

"I’m sorry,” said Marianne, at last.

“They’ll lose interest eventually, if I manage to be boring enough.”

“Boring? You wouldn’t even know how.”

“Hah.” Héloïse began to trace a finger along one of the strands of vine leaves sketched out across the wall. “I heard this room was for the the Conte. Do you think she loves him, or is she just afraid he won’t be interested when he gets home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she just enjoys spending money.”

“My husband was like that. He never understood why I didn’t enjoy the things he bought.”

Marianne stepped forward without even realizing it, reaching out to clasp Héloïse’s arm. Lace crumpled beneath her fingers, warm from Héloïse’s skin. She expected to be shaken off, but Héloïse simply stood there frozen, watching her. It was as if they'd been drifting closer for years, and the time had come to collide. At this distance, Marianne could see the fine lines at the corner of her eyes, the stray hairs escaping from under her veil. Her lips parted, and Marianne suddenly remembered holding Héloïse’s wrist in a very different context, with no barrier between them.

“You can —” Marianne began to say, breaking off as the stairs creaked down below. Héloïse shook her arm free and a few seconds later the Contessa appeared in the doorway, as cheerful as ever.

A river of greetings and smalltalk washed over them both, and Marianne watched as Héloïse readjusted her posture and pasted on a polite smile. Not for the first time, Marianne was aware of two conversations happening at once. The light one on the surface, where the Contessa offered comforting gestures and shared a recipe for tea to help Héloïse sleep. And then the second conversation underneath, spoken through the angle of Héloïse’s shoulders toward Marianne, and the way their eyes would catch momentarily before breaking away.

Marianne allowed herself to fade silently into the background of the how-are-yous and the would-you-like-to-stay-for-dinners, trying to quell the lurching in her gut until Héloïse finally gave her an opening: “I was just complimenting your painter on her work here," she said to the Contessa. "I’m sure your husband will love it.”

“Oh!” said the Contessa, suddenly enthused. “You know, maybe you should do something similar at home, once —” she cut herself off, clearly worried she might trigger a paroxysm of grief. "Well, it's something to consider." 

“Maybe so,” said Héloïse in measured tones, and glanced at Marianne once again.

So: Permission, then.

* * *

Lying awake that night, Marianne turned their conversation over in her mind, and at last came to the unwilling conclusion that Héloïse was afraid.

Not afraid in the immediate sense, because Héloïse clearly had no qualms about starting arguments with someone she hadn’t seen in years, or dropping delicate hints that she wanted to see Marianne again. But in a deeper sense, yes. Her husband's death had been sudden, and that meant sudden uncertainty.

Marianne spent much of her time with rich wives, or else with girls hoping to become them. There was a certain kind of fear that spread subtly as they grew older, expanding as their lives gradually shrank in scope. She suspected that for Héloïse, the last eight years had been spent very busily, running a household and entrenching herself in a web of wealthy society ladies. Women like that held the purse strings to Marianne's income, but while that money bought them security, it was the security of a locked door. Héloïse could afford a new wardrobe every season, and a box at the opera, but you couldn't buy the knowledge of how to get passage on a riverboat, or how to tell if a tavern was safe to stay in, or any of the other little skills that Marianne absorbed as instinct long ago. And along with all that, Héloïse had a child. She was more free as a widow than she might have been a year ago, but there were a thousand things tying her down here.

If Marianne was to make an approach, it would have to be with sympathy. Not the breaking down of a door, but the offering of a key.

* * *

Marianne owned four dresses. A good one, for impressing snobbish clients. Two everyday ones, and then a fourth that she kept for particularly messy work.

Today she put on the best of the four, and folded the worst one into a neat little bundle, wrapped around with a shawl. Then she set off to the house of the Marcello family, whose address she'd learned from a judicious conversation with the Contessa’s kitchen boy.

All the way there, she second-guessed herself. What if she was turned away at the door? Would it be worse if Héloïse did it herself, or if she sent a servant to do it for her? Marianne rehearsed a number of convincing lies and half-truths in her head, strategising the best way to get into a house in mourning.

In the end, it was Theresa's name that acted as the password to get her inside.

The Marcello house was actually a set of apartments, set in the heart of a neighborhood of merchants and bankers and other people whose money was too fresh to belong with the true aristocrats. A busy street, where the sound of horses mixed with noise wafting in from open windows. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cover the whole block with curlicues and silly little columns, and an ostentatious crest hung over the doorway, announcing that the family had lived there for forty years.

When Marianne.knocked at the door, there was a long silence before she heard the sound of footsteps inside, and she was greeted by an elderly woman with her hair in long braids.

“Good afternoon,” said Marianne, ducking her head. “I apologise for calling without notice, but I’m an old friend from the Lady’s time in France. Is she taking visitors?”

The old housekeeper looked unimpressed by her humility and exaggerated French accent, until Marianne mentioned meeting sweet little Theresa at the Contessa’s house, at which point she thawed enough to say, "Wait here," and close the door in her face. Several agonizing minutes later, the door swung open again and she beckoned Mariiane inside.

Sunlight momentarily illuminated curling plasterwork and a huge vase of flowers before the door shut behind them, plunging the hallway into gloom. Marianne wondered if the darkness was some courtesy to mourning, or if there was just no need to light the place with only two people left behind to fill its many rooms. It was eerily silent. Clearly the rest of the servants had been dismissed - temporarily or forever, she had no idea. 

Following the housekeeper upstairs, she was led to a large room not unlike the Contessa's salon. The first face Marianne saw was her own reflection, framed in the gilt of an enormous mirror. Startled, only then did she notice Héloïse standing by the window, outlined by the sun. She was waiting for Marianne head-on, putting her in mind of old stories about battlefields, and the strategic import of staking out the higher ground.

The old woman closed the door behind her, leaving them alone. Héloïse seemed content to wait in silence.

"Was I wrong to come?" asked Marianne. She shook her head, and so Marianne crossed the room in a handful of rapid footsteps, holding out her little bundle of cloth. "I brought you something," she said.

Wrongfooted, Héloïse untied the shawl and let Marianne's faded brown dress unfurl to the ground. It was stained with old mud around the hem, and the cuffs had long since worn through. Héloïse stared at it like she was trying to divine a hidden message.

“You said you were sick of people watching you,” said Marianne. “But you don’t need to play the grieving widow all the time. I thought... if you covered your hair, dressed more plainly, went out the back door instead of the front...”

Héloïse turned the dress over in her hands. “I used to do exactly that, when we first moved to the city,” she said distantly. “I'd go to market with the cook, and no one would recognize me. But then we sold most of my trousseau, it was too plain. I’d forgotten. I must be an idiot, to forget something so simple.”

“Sometimes when you can’t have something, it’s better to forget.” 

“Is it?” said Héloïse, and turned sharply, tossing the dress over the back of a nearby chair.

“Help me with this,” she ordered, and began tugging at the buttons down the front of her bodice. Marianne moved to obey, mouth going dry as Héloïse freed her shoulders. Under the stiff black dress was a lace chemise and a tighter corset than anything Marriane ever wore, pinching her waist into an angular little triangle. Marianne hesitated. “That, too,” said Héloïse impatiently. “I won’t need it.”

Their fingers fumbled together to untie the ribbons, hurrying as if they were in the midst of an emergency. _Someone must lace her into this thing every morning,_ thought Marianne, as she defeated the knot and felt Héloïse’s ribcage expand with a sigh. With a rustle of canvas and whalebone, the corset fell to her waist and Héloïse wriggled out the rest of the way, leaving her in the wrinkled white chemise, panting slightly and with strands of hair stuck to her face.

It all happened so fast that Marianne was momentarily struck dumb, barely following what was going on as Héloïse reached past her and grabbed the old dress she’d slung onto the chair, stepping into it and shoving her hands through the sleeves. It looked horrible, too loose around the waist and tight around the shoulders, with an undefeated paint stain marring part of one arm.

“Well?” she demanded, smoothing down the skirts.

Marianne tried to look at her with a critical eye. “Your hair,” she said, and Héloïse retrieved the shawl, which had found its way to the floor. Knotted around the crown of her head, it did a good enough job of hiding her golden hair, completing the picture of a completely ordinary woman. No mourning, no money; just another person in a secondhand dress, probably in a hurry to somewhere.

“Perfect,” said Marianne.

Héloïse rolled her shoulders, getting used to the freedom. “Alright," she said, businesslike. "Where shall we go first? We should be back before nightfall, or old Karla will make a fuss.”

“I thought you’d want to go out alone,” said Marianne carefully, who had come here expecting a long, difficult conversation, not a rapid bout of undressing. “You said you were tired of people watching you all the time.”

Héloïse paused, already halfway across the room. “No,” she said. "You're coming with me." And then she was pulling the door open, leaving Marianne to follow. 

The house was cool and silent as they made their way downstairs, Héloïse treading quietly past a series of closed doors. She led Marianne even further down to the very back of the house, past an empty kitchen large enough for a cook and several maids, and finally to a dark staircase that must lead to the back door, so narrow it was almost a tunnel.

The flagstones were worn down from decades of servants running through, and Marianne almost tripped over her own feet in the darkness. The afternoon sun was a thin yellow line between the edge of the door and the lintel, throwing Héloïse’s face into shadow as she turned and caught hold of Marianne’s hand.

“I said I was sick of neighbors watching me," she said urgently. "Sick of distant relatives. You never watched me like that. You _saw_ me.”

The grip on Marianne's hand tightened, and suddenly they were pressed together in the narrow little hallway, her back hitting the cold brick. When their lips met she could hear their shared breath and the rustle of their clothes together, and it sounded like the ocean. 


End file.
